Eberly College of Science

Marker mathematical lectures set for Oct. 1 to 4

Enrico Bombieri, professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Mathematical Sciences on Oct. 1 to 4 at Penn State University Park. The free, public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "The Classical Theory of L-functions," which will be held at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1, in 114 McAllister Building. Bombieri also will give three specialized lectures in 114 McAllister:

-- "The Rosetta Stone of L-functions" at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 2.

-- "L-function and Diophantine Equations" at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 3.

-- "A Problem on Sums of Two Squares" at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 4.

Bombieri is one of the world's most versatile and distinguished mathematicians. He has significantly influenced number theory, algebraic geometry, partial differential equations and the theory of finite groups. He is one of the authors of the Bombieri-Vinogradov Theorem -- a central theorem in the field of analytic number theory. He is renowned for his service on behalf of the mathematics profession, especially for serving on external review boards and for peer-reviewing extraordinarily complicated mathematics manuscripts. Bombieri's many honors include the Caccioppoli Prize in 1966, the Fields Medal in 1974 and the King Faisal International Prize in 2010. He is a member of four national academies of science in Italy and in the United States, and he is a foreign member of three other national academies of science. He was named Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica in 2002.

Bombieri earned a doctoral degree at the University of Milan in 1963. He taught at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa before joining the Institute for Advanced Study as IBM von Neumann Professor in 1977.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences and physics. For more information about the lectures, contact Robin Enderle at 814-865-7527

Enrico Bombieri is professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated January 9, 2015